What a week I just had... or was it ten days? I sort of lost track. It started with this book release that I've been waiting for from this one author - you might have heard of him - Brandon Sanderson. Yeah, I just listened to a FORTY EIGHT HOUR audiobook in just under twelve days. With my life, that is crazy talk. And definitely explains why I have been MIA on my blog. Sorry! But, Words of Radiance is one of those books that reminds me why I love to read so much. Luckily it takes a while for him to write a tome of this magnitude so, while I swore I would never start or commit to another series that wasn't completed after Robert Jordan died - DIED - before finishing my last fantasy obsession, I have a while between books so my life can get back to normal.
Here's another confession - I might have been obsessing about reading because I was hiding from my novel. Creativity is such a bitch some times and this writing thing is HARD work. Sigh. I'm knee-deep in revisions on my novel from November and realized that I started the story halfway through. No biggie, I just need to go back and write the beginning. Problem is, my main character came to me after she'd gotten herself into a predicament and I hadn't given much more than cursory thought about HOW she had gotten there. And every idea I came up with was totally cliche or worse, boring. I rationalized all week that I was "refilling the well" by reading instead of writing. That thinking about my story was the same as writing. After all, I was still thinking about my story. When I wasn't immersed in the world Sanderson built instead of my own that is. Truth is, I barely wrote anything all week.
Sunday I woke up early to a quiet house. Should have gone for a run but instead I brewed a pot of coffee and proceeded to drink the WHOLE thing while sitting on the couch with my headphones plugged into the last hours of my book. Nobody's perfect, right? When it was over, I had nowhere left to hide from my creative road bump I'd been grappling with all week. I dove into a project I've got going with my writer's group (hiding again) and shouted out to Facebook for inspiration. At the end of the day, kids all tucked into bed and Hubby watching his latest installment of Walking Dead, I finally took my own advice and put my butt in the seat and just started writing. I knew it would probably suck. It was first draft territory after all. And, I was probably writing the equivalent of clearing my throat by faking it till I figured it all out. But it wasn't going to write itself. Big girl panties... check.
An hour later, I had exhausted all my coffee reserves and had to force myself to stop. Yes, force. Because a few minutes into it, I found one tiny nugget of inspiration and realized I knew all along what had happened. I just had to get over myself and the irrationality about how I didn't really know (your subconscious isn't really you, right?) Hurdle cleared. Now on to the next one!
Someone this week reminded me that there is a huge difference between talking about writing and actually writing. My life is always an exercise in balance - on steroids most of the time. And while I'm good at juggling everything I'm not always so great at recognizing when I'm telling myself lies about what is really happening. Here's to it getting easier to recognize next time and not wasting any more of my writing time unnecessarily.
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